Processing email takes way too much time because we never learned to manage it effectively. We are constantly interrupted, invest countless hours in it, re-read emails that languish in our inbox, store email we don’t need and suffer from email overload. Don’t you agree?

This book provides what you need to manage email, eliminate the overload and save your precious time. It will help you minimize interruption, overcome indecision and empty your inbox. It will help you organize priorities and manage time, so you can get your work done—at work. You can give up doing email at dinner and in bed. Good idea?

Table of Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction

One Principles

Two Processing Methods

Three Personalizing Your Email Experience

Four Detailed Inbox Processing

Five Sending an Email

Six Considering Group and Team Email

Seven Special Applications

Eight Exploring Productivity: A Guide for Managers

Appendix MasteringEmail™ At-A-Glance

About the Author

From the Introduction

I believe these email problems are compounded because most people do not process email effectively. They look at it, ponder, partially process it, and leave the email in the inbox to consider again later. Their full inboxes create confusion, they miss deadlines, their replies don’t fit the subject and they have inbox anxiety. Well, sure! Most of us were never trained to process email. We learned by the seat of our pants.

The straightforward and intelligent methodology of MasteringEmail™ will benefit you in the following ways.

1. You will not be a slave to arriving email.

2. You will have fewer disruptions.

3. You will feel less email frustration.

4. Processing email will take less time.

5. Email will help you plan, organize and control your work.

From Chapter One

This chapter provides you with the underlying principles of MasteringEmail. It will show you how to relieve the anxiety of email overload by spending less time processing messages and more time doing actual work. In addition, your colleagues will benefit by your example, and your life will get easier as they follow your lead, making for a healthier work/life balance for everyone. Imagine the joy!

Principle 2 Do not surrender today’s plans to today’s email

Don’t think of incoming email as a spontaneous ToDo list, unless it’s your job to respond immediately to incoming email. Instead, discipline yourself to use your email to build a task list, arrange your calendar and organize your work. The way to save yourself from surrendering today’s plans to today’s email is to plan your work and work your plan. That way, you should be able to get your work done and go home at a reasonable hour.

Email sent or received today should only be important to your near future. If input is required for today’s work, pick up the phone.

From Chapter Three

Here are a few additional folders you could set up on your hard drive to help you empty your inbox.

JustGottaKeepIt (JGKI)—If you don’t know what to do with the thing in your inbox, don’t labor over it very long. Drag it to JGKI and move on. It will be out of the inbox and out of sight. Maybe you’ll benefit from it later. Most likely, you’ll zap it the next time you see it. Consider automatically purging anything that sits for 30 days, and set up the purge when you establish the folder.

From Chapter Four

This chapter will explore in greater detail how to make appropriate decisions and get your inbox count to zero just about every time you batch process your email. It includes examples of specific situations you might face and instructions for how to convert an email into a customized item on your ToDo list, a calendar entry, an appointment or a note.

Empty your trash

Delete aggressively! Delete FYI carbon copies and stop thinking that you will throw away something you might need later. For goodness sake, don’t file unimportant email. Do you keep an extra trash can at home for trash you might want again? Or do you keep your trash for a couple extra weeks in a “holding area” before putting it out for pick-up? In the rare instance you might need the information you threw away, you can always ask for it from the person who sent it. They (and all the other people on the cc list) will still have a copy. If emptying your trash folder at the end of the day scares you—is the missing silverware in the garbage?—configure your trash folder to delete anything two weeks old. When trash accumulates, you could run out of memory or your administrator could shut you down.

From Chapter Eight Exploring Productivity: A Guide for Managers

If you are a member of upper management, hold a position of higher authority or have a broad sphere of influence in your organization, you’re feeling the pain of social networking, Smartphones, and information overload—especially email distraction, which one British email expert has characterized as a modern addiction. Consequently, today’s productivity is being sacrificed to today’s email, which accounts for a disproportionate loss of creative thinking time and work/life balance, while increasing the bottom-line cost in dollars to companies.

Don’t despair. Those of you who are called upon to lead and who set the tone for your organizations, often in ways you are unaware of, are in a unique position to recapture that lost creative time, lost life balance, and lost dollars by assertively taking steps to reduce the flow of email through your own company, if you choose to do so. You are holding the methodology—MasteringEmail™—in your hand.

Bob, the engineer, developed computer communication systems and one of the first PCs. After that career in digital technology, Bob did postgraduate work in organization development and founded Performance Improvement Technologies, Inc. to facilitate corporate change and coach executives.

Concern by professionals and management about email overload and productivity loss encouraged Bob to seek a solution for these issues. He developed the MasteringEmail™ methodology so knowledge workers and professionals can achieve the benefits of email without the burden. Bob wrote chapter eight for upper management to explore productivity issues.

Bob and his wife, Carol, two married children and three grandchildren, live and work in the Philadelphia area.

All modern office workers and their managers (including upper management)should read this concise, to-the-point book. It is a book that lives up to its title, it truly will help you unload your email overload

Sam P

A friend told me about this book. I've had it a little over a week now and so far I've learned three really useful timesaver-type strategies. In my work life I handle alot of emails but am not at all a techie--so I wasn't sure that this book would give me ideas I could use easily, without spending alot of time figuring out how to move files around in fancy new ways. Nice surprise that the tricks suggested are do-able.

One more thing--this is the kind of book you can open up when you don't have much time because you can poke around a little and come away having learned something useful. Definitely recommend it for non-techie, very busy people whose jobs require alot of emailing.

Linda F

Great Book! A must read for anyone with a personal or work email account. The author provides several helpful tips and techniques for managing your email. I intend to use this book as a reference for ideas on how to manage my work email accounts.

LAM

I have learned so many good tips that help me unload and manage my email. One that was most helpful was the 'Read It Later' file. Also, I delete aggressively since reading this book; and I find I can easily read what is current without trails of information from before that is not pertinent to me at this time. It's been a great help.

Carol M

Well-researched, insightful, and highly actionable methodology!

This is a great resource for anyone who finds themselves underwater, drowning in emails and unable to break free. Mr. O'Hare is an experienced business consultant and one thing I enjoyed in the book is his many allegories and specific information related to corporate executives, mid-level managers, and others dealing with email overload from inside of large organizations. The book discusses the costs of email overload quite cogently, so I would recommend it especially for senior executives trying to decide how seriously to take email overload within their organizations. Is it something worth putting on the agenda this quarter? The author's analyses and links to outside calculators are a great resource to help figure this out.

I also felt that the "steps" offered in the book are quite manageable. I've read a few things such as GTD and various methodologies that seem to be a bit too involved for anyone not trying to attain a PhD in email management. The methods in this book, by contrast, are not so numerous as to be unmanageable--the steps are logical and not confusing.

On the whole, a very well researched and insightful book on a complex topic, with a simple step-by-step action plan that will lead to email success.

Bret BW

As a busy professional, email was attempting to dictate my priorities. Unload Email Overload prompted me to take action on stale emails and organize my inbox. It's an concise book that shows how productivity can increase if emails are managed properly and methods to process email effectively. Now that my inbox is pretty much empty each day, I feel less stressed and can focus on what really matters. I recommend it to anyone with an active email account. It's an enlightening read!

Ashlee

As a desktop computer pioneer, Bob O’Hare is without a doubt familiar with technology and its intended use. I was impressed with his book, “Unload Email Overload”. In it he shares his long-standing expertise and provides tips for folks at all levels of the mastering email spectrum to help them manage email overload and conquer their inboxes. It’s an applicable piece and I recommend it for anyone’s bookshelf – in the office and at home.

David Grossman

Super book. It's filled with many excellent, timesaving suggestions. Three of my favorites are: empty in-box every day, limit time spent on checking emails to about three times a day and delete any email that says "send to 10 friends".

Book is a goldmine of information. Strongly recommend!

Aileen S.

Add a review

Name (Required)

Email (Required, never displayed)

Rating

12345

Comments

Please enter the text from the above text boxexactly as is (case sensitive)